


On Coffee, Nightmares, and Reasons to Live

by gellavonhamster



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Don’t copy to another site, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 17:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18609508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster
Summary: Some time after the Great Unknown incident, Hector's dreams still remind him of the consequences of his cowardice, and Widdershins still finds himself unable to adjust to life on land.Originally posted in Russian as Part 4 of "Группа Пропащих Волонтёров".





	On Coffee, Nightmares, and Reasons to Live

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Группа Пропащих Волонтёров](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16039004) by [gellavonhamster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster). 



_Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not._

– _Donna Tartt, The Secret History_

_I saw an old soldier abandon his watch,_

_I saw an old sailor abandon his ship –_

_“To hell with your war,_

_What on earth is it for?”_

_That’s what the old soldier and old sailor said._

 

_They looked each other in the eye,_

_Coming back from death, they cried:_

_“To hell with your war,_

_What on earth is it for?”_

_That’s what the old soldier and old sailor said._

– _Olga Arefyeva & Kovcheg, __На_ _хрена_ _нам_ _война_ _(Why the Hell Do We Need War?)_

“I admire them,” Hector confessed, pointing at the birds with a motion of his head. A murder of crows flew over their heads with agitated croaking as he and Jacques Snicket were sitting on the grass behind Hector’s old house in the Village of Fowl Devotees. Hector was thirteen, which meant that Jacques was, consequently, a little older, and he couldn’t help wondering: did he really live here already when he was this age? Something wasn’t adding up here but it didn’t matter, because a gentle summer wind was blowing and the sunset skies were the colour of ripe persimmon and he didn’t want to ruin this moment of peace, so rare for the volunteers who have dedicated their lives to maintaining it.  

“Yes, they’re amazing creatures. Wise,” Jacques agreed. The wind licked his hair, ruffling it in a funny manner. “You know, they say when crows find one of their kind dead, they give it a sort of a funeral. Fly in circles over it, and mourn.”  

“I’ve heard something about this,” Hector ran the tips of his fingers over the grass, “but it’s not just crows I’m talking about. I mean any birds. I spend my days tinkering with these air balloons and baskets and burners while they can just… up and fly. Can you imagine it? I’d give a lot to have such freedom.”

“I see,” Jacques replied. He turned to Hector and looked at him closely. It was as if the crows started cawing louder, but it might have just seemed so.

Hector felt a fit of unease.

“Why didn’t you stand up for me when I was arrested?” asked Jacques. Suddenly he was forty-seven, which meant that Hector was, consequently, forty-five. “You did recognize me. You have known me since our very childhood. Why did you let them burn me?”

“They didn’t burn you,” Hector objected nervously, backing away. “They didn’t burn you!” he repeated louder, smelling smoke. The jacket the eldest Snicket was wearing – more precisely, its left sleeve – was burning, but its owner didn’t seem to notice.  

“Right, they didn’t manage to. Olaf and Esme murdered me. That changes everything, doesn’t it?”

His skin was turning black and coming off and Hector watched, watched, watched frozen in horror and shame and couldn’t avert his gaze.  

“Why did you let them sentence me? Why did you let them kill me? Why did you let them put the Baudelaires in prison? Why did you let them burn the Baudelaires at the stake?”

“But the Baudelaires weren’t burned!” Hector wanted to cry, but the words stuck in his throat. That was how he woke up – hoarse and suffocating and trying to cough out his answer to the corpse. The answer that was nothing but a senseless excuse because the Baudelaires might not have been burned, but Hector really did let the villagers of VFD put them in prison and sentence them to death. Because he might have been there in time in his self-sustained mobile home and would have taken them with him if he hadn’t been thwarted, but he really did not say a word when he had an opportunity. That was what mattered.  

There was a cup of water on the nightstand. Sitting up on the bed, Hector grabbed the cup, made a couple gulps, coughed again, and, having put the cup back, took his head in his hands. The dawn was breaking; somewhere far off, a dog was barking. The clock read a quarter after five.  

It wasn’t the first time he dreamed of Jacques. In fact, if Hector saw any nightmares, Jacques was a regular there. Sometimes he was simply there to remind him that his death is, in a way, Hectors’s fault; sometimes, like tonight, he dragged in the Baudelaires; sometimes he just remained speechless while the flames devoured him. Waking up each time, Hector remembered that creature – phenomenon? – that attacked them back then, after the mobile home collided with the _Queequeg_ , and prayed for it to be what he sees in his dreams next time. But it never visited his nightmares because there was no fear in them, only the endless feeling of guilt and shame, and the stale crusts of the unsaid words he kept on trying to cough out even after waking up.     

He spent some ten minutes sitting in bed and struggling to calm down. Hector knew that he wouldn’t manage to fall asleep anymore – after the nightmares, he never could – so he decided to go down to the kitchen for an early breakfast. Later he could chop up the filling for tacos, or whip the tomato sprouts into shape. Keep his hands busy to distract himself, at least remotely. He got dressed in the twilight and left his bedroom, softly closing the door after himself.

The bedroom opposite to his was Quigley’s. Its door was ajar, which meant that all three Quagmires slept there that night. Isadora and Duncan had their own bedrooms (hers was to the left from Quigley’s, and his was opposite to his sister’s room) but every night the triplets invariably went to sleep in one of the three rooms all together. No one discussed that, and no one frowned upon that. Perhaps in some other, normal home adults would have disapproved of teenagers of different gender, albeit relatives, sleeping in the same bed, but their house could be called normal with great reserve only, even though lately, after the Quagmires with the help of Fernald and Fiona had stolen their inheritance from the bank, after some minor repairs, throwing out the rotten carpets, and fitting the broken window in the corridor with glass, it could well, in Hector’s humble opinion, be called decent.  

He peeped into the room. The brothers huddled together on a narrow bed, having yielded their sister a hammock that hung over it. Quigley, of course, slept the closest to the door. Such was the rule: the owner of the room took the place that was the nearest to the entrance and left the door half open, to hear any suspicious sound and wake the others up in time. This time too, even though Hector did his best not to make a sound, Quigley’s eyes flew open.   

“Sleep,” Hector whispered and smiled: all clear, false alarm, no strangers in the house, just their own people. The boy gave him a faint smile and drifted off again. A half-read book rested on his stomach – something about the _Terra Nova_ expedition. Still smiling, Hector came down to the first floor – home to the kitchen, the dining room, and a box of a room which once had possibly belonged to the help but presently to Captain Widdershins, who claimed that this place, a step away from being a broom closet, reminded him of submarine cabins (in truth, he slept there first and foremost because he had a hard time climbing the stairs, but he didn’t like to discuss that). Fiona and Fernald slept in the attic, using folding screens to divide it into two rooms, but now the attic was empty: both were to return only today.      

Hector entered the kitchen and gave a start – Widdershins was seated at the table, sipping something from a cup. On seeing Hector come in, or rather hearing him in the first place, the retired captain got embarrassed and promptly took something off the table. Hector frowned. 

“Good morning,” he said warily.

“Morning!” Widdershins responded, eyeing him just as warily.

“You up at such an unearthly hour?”

“Aye! Insomnia! And some damned dog keeps barking. Decided to have a coffee.”

“Doesn’t smell like coffee for some reason.”

“Still heating the water,” Widdershins explained with uncertainty. None of the stove burners was ignited.

Hector went round the table. The side that Widdershins was seated at had a cutlery drawer. The tablecloth over it stuck out expressively. Hector lifted the tablecloth a little – Widdershins didn’t say a word – and took out a broached bottle of whiskey.   

“Where did you take it?” asked Hector, putting the bottle into the cupboard. “I don’t remember you leaving the house lately.”

“I may be disabled but I’m not a cot case, after all!” Widdershins replied with dignity. “Went out while you were at the market. Bought with my own money! Fixed the neighbours’ meat grinder. They paid me. Aye! Fair and square!”

“You sort of promised not to drink anymore. What’s fair about that?”

“Ha! Promised! I haven’t promised you anything, Hector! Why do you care?”

“As for me, feel free to drink yourself to death,” Hector shrugged his shoulders. He did care, and he didn’t want Widdershins to actually drink himself to death, but the fact remained that he wasn’t happy and had no intention to hide it. “It is your children that you promised it to. Perhaps I should just let your stepson smash this bottle on your head when he comes back.”

Widdershins threw back his head, finished his drink that definitely wasn’t coffee, and slammed his cup on the table.  

“Perhaps you should,” he replied, defiant.  

Hector filled the teapot with water and put it on the stove to boil. Some actual coffee really wouldn’t hurt.

“You’re not the only one struggling, you know,” he said, not turning around. “Just some food for thought.”

He reached out for the coffee grinder.

“Give me!” Widdershins ordered ashamedly. “I’ll do it!”

He proceeded to grind coffee as ferociously as if each bean was his personal enemy, while Hector quietly put the cup that smelled of whiskey into the sink and replaced it with two clean ones. They spent some time silent, the coffee grinder creaking with age and exertion. The dog outside calmed down, but now they could hear a train passing somewhere far off.   

“I’m not at my place here!” Widdershins finally blurted out. It was not as if he was talking to Hector – more like to the coffee grinder. “I’m used to the sea! To the submarine! Always on my way! And now I’m trapped on shore! With my leg missing and my back aching! Weak and sickly! And even if I get stronger, even if I unlearn to view myself as inferior,” he slapped his leg that turned into a wooden peg right under his knee, “I still won’t be able to return to the sea! Because that beast is there! Because now my guts fill up with cold when I think of the sea I love so much! Why couldn’t it kill me straight away? What’s the use of me now?”  

“Your stepdaughter needs you. So does your stepson, even,” Hector pointed out.  

“I failed them!”

“They’ve forgiven you.”

That last point Hector was not completely sure about, but both Fiona – especially Fiona – and Fernald mostly dealt by their stepfather as if everything has always been fine between them. Some scandals occurred, like the evening the captain finally decided to tell his stepchildren what was in the sugar bowl, but for the most part, there was peace, though with no particular affection.   

Widdershins shook his head.

“I’m not worthy of them!”

“Well, then make yourself worthy,” Hector retorted, took the coffee grinder from him, and spooned the coffee into the cups. “If there’s any reason for you to have survived, then that is it. Hitting the bottle is not.”

With the way Widdershins often acted, it was impossible not to be rude to him. Hector really enjoyed being rude. There were times when he used to think he had completely forgotten how it was done.

“I see this creature in my dreams nearly every night,” Widdershins murmured after Hector poured boiling water into the cups and took a bowl of crackers out of the cupboard. 

“I don’t,” Hector said calmly, and shivered under the understanding gaze of his old comrade. He couldn’t recall telling anyone about his nightmares but it was quite possible that they were easy to figure out. Quite possible that there was a sign saying _coward_ hanging perpetually above his head, only he didn’t notice it himself.     

Widdershins sighed.

“If all of us stayed alive, then it really was for a reason,” he said solemnly. “If I am needed, then you are needed all the more! Aye! Because you take care of the triplets! And of the household! And you cook us food! And you could build a new aircraft! And we could help our children,” that wasn’t the first time either of them called the Quagmires, Fernald, and Fiona _their_ children, although the Quagmires weren’t Hector’s children, and Fernald and Fiona technically weren’t Widdershins’ children, “stop the VFD! So that it would become what it should have been, or cease to exist at all! Aye! For Jacques! And Monty! And Josephine! And Kit! And our old chap Lemony, be he alive or dead! How’s that for a reason to live?”     

Hector felt a lump growing in his throat.

“What a speech. You’re drunk at the crack of dawn, Widdershins.”

“But I’m right, face it!”

“Yes,” Hector admitted. It was very important for that to be true. Such truth one could live with. “You’re right.”

Then they had coffee with crackers, and for a little while, the world was actually quiet.


End file.
